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operating nuclear plant Articles

With the blast of the French nuclear power plant a few weeks ago, safety of nuclear power plant designs has fallen under more scrutiny. Although according to sources the blast took place in the turbine hall and no nuclear leak was found, this event has brought more attention to improved design and operation standards. Following the incident earlier this month Toshiba, a Japanese ...

Background Few events occur today that reveal a completely new cause or failure mechanism. Although not clear during an event, most investigations find that internal or external industry operating experience (OE) was available which, if used effectively, could have prevented the event. In fact, a station manager provided the following comments concerning a recent event at his station: “This event ...

Background Operating experience is a valuable source of information for learning and in the process improving the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants. One of the main elements of this process is the collection of event information in a systematic way that conforms with agreed reporting thresholds. The reported information than needs to be screened to ensure that all significant matters ...

Maintaining nuclear competencies in the nuclear industry and nuclear regulatory authorities will be one of the most critical challenges in the near future. The purposes of this paper are to identify the fundamental elements needed for an effective Knowledge Management (KM) system, share with nuclear industry operating organisation managers the lessons learned in the industry regarding KM and, ...

Previous studies of the Forsmark incident from 25 July 2006 emphasised a need to improve integration and communication between the nuclear plants and the operating company of the power grid. This paper aims to better understand why communication issues occurred and what improvements are needed. For these purposes, communication issues were analysed in the context of knowledge management, more ...

This paper presents the pre-eminent features of a new generation of nuclear reactors in comparison with existing generations, such as safety operation, non-release of radioactive materials into the environment under any conditions, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and suitability for developing countries. The paper also presents some results on the physical features related to fuel burn-up, ...

Preventing the loss of nuclear knowledge has become an important concern for the atomic energy industry. A great number of nuclear workers are getting close to the retirement age and there are not enough young qualified people to replace them. It is necessary to identify the key skills to replace senior engineers, managers and experienced workers. This paper proposes a matrix for capturing the ...

A regulatory body acts as a representative for society to ensure that the operation of nuclear facilities do not introduce any undue threats. Typical regulatory tasks include the definition of safety requirements, the inspections needed to ensure that they are adhered to and the imposing of sanctions if violations are detected. Regulatory oversight is anchored in national legislation, which is ...

The development of Belene NPP began with site selection in the 1970s, site characterisation in 1980–1981, and a decision to proceed in 1981. Construction was suspended for financial reasons in 1991. Now the state authorities have taken steps to continue the project. Despite the lengthy study period and the subsequent legislative changes, the evaluations indicate that Belene is a suitable NPP ...

The subject matter of this paper discusses the new decommissioning system for nuclear power plants in Japan, including the system for the disposal of demolition waste and the decommissioning cost allowance system. The Nuclear Regulations Law, established in 1957, ordering that decommissioning be carried out, it was naturally impossible to set proper safety regulations. While the present safety ...

A US nuclear plant and their engineering contractor were faced with an unexpected challenge in the course of design work regarding installation of an emergency steam dump sparger in the plant’s Low Pressure (LP) condenser. During pre-outage reviews of the planned installation, it was found that an existing partition plate running nearly the length of the condenser was obstructing access. ...

Between 1972 and 2007, altogether 17 major terror attacks or acts of sabotage were carried out against Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). None of them resulted in an uncontrolled radioactive release. In order to reduce the security risk to NPPs due to terrorists in the future, preemptive measures are necessary to identify their motivation, incentives, and operational and logistical capabilities to ...

The probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) is investigated in the case of the operational data shortage which is characteristic of the passive system in gas-cooled nuclear power plants (NPPs). Therefore, it is difficult to make a quantification of the PSA. One of the solutions is to compare the passive system and the active system. Using this comparison, one can find the priority of the passive ...

Nuclear power generation in the United States is falling. After increasing rapidly since the 1970s, electricity generation at U.S. nuclear plants began to grow more slowly in the early 2000s. It then plateaued between 2007 and 2010—before falling more than 4 percent over the last two years. Projections for 2013 show a further 1 percent drop. With reactors retiring early and proposed ...

Over the last few years the nuclear industry has used concerns about climate change to argue for a nuclear revival. Although industry representatives may have convinced some political leaders that this is a good idea, there is little evidence of private capital investing in nuclear plants in competitive electricity markets. The reason is simple: nuclear power is uneconomical. In an excellent ...

Energy production from fossil fuels, mainly natural gas and coal, contributes significantly to global warming through large-scale greenhouse gas emissions, mainly of hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. At least for the next few decades, one of the realistic options for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from energy production could be the increasing use of ...

Armenia has rather a rich history of nuclear knowledge development. During the last several decades, depending upon circumstances related to the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant main milestones ? construction, putting into operation, shutdown and restarting ? nuclear knowledge has had its ups and downs. Though it has a high level of development, there is still a need to preserve accumulated nuclear ...

The promise of nuclear power for the future is bright. Solutions have been worked out for the safe storage of nuclear waste. Environmentalists are reconsidering their opposition to nuclear power. Nuclear is economically competitive with fossil systems for electricity generation. Fast breeder reactors reduce the decay time for spent fuel from 250,000 years to 500, make better use of uranium ...

The production of nuclear energy in Romania, at the Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) with CANDU-600 equipment and five 700 MW reactors, one of which is operational, will cover 10% of the national energy demand. In this paper we discuss the following problems: the exploitation of the installation in conditions of safety and the prospect of increasing the final power output of the NPP; the ...

A nuclear safeguard protocol (NSP) is constructed for the nuclear material flow in the operation of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Secure plant operation is one of critical issues against the risk of possible terrorism. The basic event of the related incidents is quantified by the random sampling of the Monte-Carlo method incorporating a zero-sum method. The analytic hierarchy process is developed ...